Don't get attached
by magic10
Summary: This is mainly a fanfic for the awesome webcomic The Property of Hate (TPoH) but it's also a crossover with Night Vale so I'm posting it here because TPoH doesn't have a section. RGB has a rule about never getting attached to the heroes he brings to the Dream Lands. This is the story about the reasons behind his rule. See inside for warnings.


**Title:** Don't Get Attached  
**Fandons: **The Property of Hate/Welcome to Night Vale crossover**  
Summery:** RGB has a rule about never getting attached to the heroes he brings to the Dream Lands. This is the story about the reasons behind his rule and the fate of some of the hero before the little girl we all know and love.  
**Word Count:** 1,518  
**Warnings:** Death and blood. This is not a happy story.  
**Disclamer: **Neither The Property of Hate or Welcome to Night Vale belong to me

Don't get attached

Don't get attached. It was such a simple rule.

Don't. Get. Attached.

It hadn't always been that way. RGB knew he wasn't the easiest being for humans to get on with. He had always been a jerk at times. However, before everything went wrong, he'd never purposefully distanced himself from them.

When things had first started to go bad, RGB had come up with a plan to fix it. At the time the others had told him it would all blow over, that he was overreacting and _She_ would be gone in a few sleep cycles. However, RGB had sensed the rustlings of change in the land and known something was wrong.

The first person he'd brought to the Dream Lands had been called Philip before he'd arrived and become a hero. Philip was fifteen on Earth but age didn't mean the same once he'd left. Philip had been old enough to know a little bit about life but still young enough to be creative and imaginative. He'd seemed perfect.

RGB had liked him, though he'd never said it out loud. He didn't even mind the teen's nickname for him, "Gogglebox."

They were in the Enchanted Wood when Anxieties had woven a web around the teen. RGB had slashed at them desperately but by the time he reached the centre of their nest his first hero had already been mummified and drained dry.

RGB didn't know if the Anxieties had immobilized him first with their venom or if he'd still been struggling when they'd bitten him and sucked his life blood away. He hoped they'd immobilized him. It might have meant that the teen was unconscious at the time.

RGB had sat there for hours, his face dripping colour, unable or unwilling to feel anything other than shock. Later, he remembered screaming, static and trying to drag the teen's dead body to safety as a large Grief and a scuttling baby Guilt followed him.

He didn't remember how he'd reached safety but he was no longer holding the dead hero when he had.

The others had started to listen then. No where in the Dream Lands was ever truly safe but it should have been impossible for Anxieties to penetrate that far into the Enchanted Wood. Soon none of them could ignore the shifting landscape.

Madras had refused to fight. She was, after all, first and foremost a business woman. However, she'd sold them all supplies at a discounted rate.

Dial had also chosen not to take part. Instead, he'd claimed a small part of the Dream Lands as his own and started protecting it. It had worked, up to a point.

Dial had created a small town and protected it from _Her_ influence. It wasn't safe but it was better than outside. Soon humans, who'd become trapped in the DreamLands one way or another, had started to adopt the town as their own.

Dial seemed to like them and even chose taken on a human form while around them so as to fit in better. In his true form, Dial usually spoke in a strong Texas accent but in his human form his voice became slower, deeper, more measured and calming.

RGB resented Dial and his small haven. He hated Dial for his short sightedness. However, no matter what he said, he couldn't seem to make Dial understand that if the rest of the Dream Lands fell, nothing Dial did would be able to stop _Her_ from destroying his precious Night Vale either.

RGB had managed to convince his cousin Reel (with a film projector for a head), TOby and a few others to fight _Her_ forces. It had been a massacre. RGB had barely escaped unscathed. Ever since then _Her _army had been searching for him and a plague of Guilts followed him everywhere.

After that most of the others had decided it was hopeless to fight. RGB couldn't understand how they could just give up and act like the end was inevitable. He'd kept fighting and found another hero.

Her name was Molly, she was three and she'd loved princesses and fairies. She'd made him tell her fairytales every night before she fell asleep.

Molly had been too young to understand fear. RGB had naively thought that would protect her. However, apparently, being too young to understand fear didn't make you unafraid or protect you from the Dream Lands' literal Fears.

The last time he'd seen her alive she'd been screaming as Fears closed in on her. After that he didn't remember anything properly. His head was full of static, anger and hatred. Normally the hatred would have been directed at the Fears and _Her_ but his head was so full of static that the anger had been uncontrolled.

The next time he'd been able to think clearly he'd been surrounded by dismembered body parts of Fears and covered in the girl's blood. Her body had been ripped to shreds.

RGB hoped the Fears had done that before he'd got there but it wasn't normal Fear behaviour. RGB never tried to remember what he'd done before coming to, just in case he'd been the one to kill her.

That's when he'd made his rule about not getting attached. It hurt too much. Plus, being chased everywhere by an ever expanding plague of Guilts and having a slow moving tribe of Sorrows never far behind slowed him down. He had a job to do. He couldn't let anything get in the way.

RGB tried again, this time with another girl. Her name used to be Nevaeh and she was eight. She was a bookworm and loved Peter Pan, The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter. RGB had tried; he'd really tried, not to get attached to her, not to care about her. He had a mission and if he let himself care about everyone he'd go mad.

It hadn't worked. She'd wormed her way into the heart he technically didn't have and he'd almost given up when she'd been killed by some of _Her_ forces.

It hurt. He'd just wanted it to stop. If the Guilts had found him first he might have let them eat him alive but instead it had been a lone Fear and he'd run instead.

RGB hadn't tried again for a long time after that. It was hard to tell how long as the Dream Lands' didn't run on the same logic as the 'real' world but there had definitely been a feeling of time and a lot of it passing before he'd decided he had to pull himself together.

Humans died all the time. RGB knew that. He could almost remember the pain of loss from a time before he'd died and been brought back in his current form. He had to keep trying, he had to succeed or their deaths would have been in vain. If he could make his plan work then, in the end, everything would have been worth it.

The boy he'd chosen next was called James. He was twelve and wanted to be a footballer. RGB had hardened his heart. He'd tried to protect the boy because he needed him for his plan to succeed. However, he made sure to try and keep his distance from him emotionally.

When the boy was carried away by a pack of good Ideas that had gone bad thanks to _Her_ influence RGB could almost make himself believe that he didn't care. He tried to convince himself that the dull ache in his chest was annoyance at having to find a new hero.

He couldn't stop himself thinking about James from time to time though. He wasn't sure if he should hope the boy was still alive or not. If he was, then the hero he'd once been was long gone leaving only an obsessed mad husk of a boy unable to think of anything but his precious Ideas. If he was dead at least he'd be at peace.

RGB tried again and again and again. He felt dead inside. It became easier to keep his distance from the heroes he brought over. However, he couldn't stop the pain at every new death.

He started to distance himself from the Dream Lands' other inhabitancies including those of his friends that weren't dead or didn't hate him yet. Madras looked at him with such pity every time he was forced by necessity to visit her establishment.

After weeks of searching, RGB found himself a new hero. This time would be different, he told himself. He would finally succeed and put everything right. Even if he failed it wouldn't matter because there would always be new heroes and he no longer got attached to them. Maybe it wouldn't hurt this time.

RGB crouched on the chest of drawers, put on his biggest smile and called to the sleeping girl in the bunk bed,

"I say," she rolled over but didn't wake. "I said; I say!" She gave a small start and looked round at him with big brown eyes, "Would you like to be a hero?"


End file.
